Spring has definitely arrived in the allotment.  With the longest day less than a month away and the sun high in the sky we are really getting some warmth into the ground and the plants are taking off.  As the picture below shows, the spuds are now growing quickly and we’ve pretty much finished earthing them up and we’ve decided that it is finally warm enough to get the sweetcorn out.

Original Plot 23 May 2016

The fruit cage, which looked pretty bare back in March is now packed with life and even though some of the plants are quite new, there is the promise of harvests to come.

Fruit Cage 23 May 2016

The greenhouses are planted up and the assorted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and aubergines have all settled in and are starting to grow away.

New Greenhouse 23 May 2016

Competition for space in the cold frame is hotting up by the middle of April, so even though it is a little earlier than recommended by Robinsons, my precious onion seedlings are planted out on 19^th 

Before planting out, I lightly fork over the beds, remove all weeds, and rake in a dose of chicken manure pellets. The top 10cm or so is primarily made up of the well rotted organic matter that had been added previously. Spacing is a bit of an issue – I want to give each of my seedlings a new home but have 46 plants to fit in (26 white and 20 red).

In the end I go for a staggered row arrangement. I plant the seedlings 25cm apart in each row, and the staggered rows are 20cm apart (approx). I water them in and then wish them well.

Red onions planted out

White onions planted out.

It has been another pretty soggy autumn/winter, which has slowed down our efforts to get the new allotment plot into shape.  We have however, managed to finish the latest (and last?) major construction project – a fruit cage.  There are some soft fruits that simply have to be protected from birds if you are going to get a decent crop and some of our favourites, like strawberries and redcurrants fall into this camp.

We have gone for the largest cage that we could assemble and fit into the available space on the grounds that filling it up would be no problem.

Fruit Cage 28 Mar 2016

The cage is 9 metres long, 2 metres wide and 3 metres high.  we built it around the existing primocane raspberries and have added a strawberry bed, gooseberry and jostaberry bushes and plum, redcurrant and whitecurrant cordons.  To try to keep the maintenance easier we have used weed suppressant membrane (topped off with bark chips) to make internal paths, along with some interlocking tiles liberated from Lynn’s Dad’s garage.

Fruit cage 28 Mar 2016

By late March, every spare inch of windowsill and staging in the greenhouses at the allotment is occupied with seedlings. Consequently, the onions are amongst the first crops to go into the cold frame for hardening off. After three weeks in the cold frame, there is little difference in size between the two sowings.

Onion seedlings in greenhouse

This is where I hit upon the second snag. We have two 5 pole sized allotments quite close together on our local site. Ideally I would love to allocate one of the beds there to my onions, however, we have tried to grow onions on our oldest plot in the past and found that we had a high incidence of white rot. Rather than risk it, I decide that I need to find space in my back garden. We have three small (4*6 feet) raised beds that we usually use for growing easy, quick access crops like salads and mange touts. I requisition these to become my onion beds.

The good thing about this is that we’ve been growing veg in these beds for over 15 years, so the soil is very well cultivated. One bed is already full of garlic and onion sets, so I have two 4’*6’ beds at my disposal.

At the beginning of March, I gently fork over the bed, remove all weeds (I know that onions do not like competition for nutrients) and rake the beds level. I then empty three 40 litre bags of well rotted farmyard manure onto each bed, spread that level and then leave them until planting out time.

Given the less than 100% germination rate and after consideration of the number of onions I need to grow, I sow another batch of both types. Germination rates prove to be consistent for both batches